Pages

Arts & Entertainment

Lora Nichols of Encampment, Wyo., got a camera for her 16th birthday in 1899 and kept snapping photos until her death at age 78. Her work leaves a vivid record of her time and place, and of her clear-eyed vision of the lives of her neighbors and kin.

In 1909, Elinore Pruitt answered Burntfork, Wyo. rancher Clyde Stewart’s Denver Post ad for a housekeeper. She soon married Stewart and achieved her dream of becoming a homesteader. Her vivid letters about her experiences were published in the book Letters of a Woman Homesteader, bringing her nationwide fame.

Trained in Paris and Rome, Baltimore artist fur-trade-wyoming-paintings-alfred-jacob-miller" class="alinks-link" title="Alfred Jacob Miller">Alfred Jacob Miller attended the 1837 fur-trade rendezvous in what’s now western Wyoming. Miller sketched and painted all aspects of the fur trade for his patron, the Scottish adventurer William Drummond Stewart, and later reworked much of this material into oil paintings for a wider audience.

Caroline Lockhart wrote a handful of novels about Wyoming in the early 20th century. They made her famous and rich, and they hold up well today. At the same time, she was a new kind of activist, a central figure in bringing to the town of Cody and the state of Wyoming a new kind of nostalgia-based culture that both have embraced ever since.

The clear, quiet poetry and fiction of Robert Roripaugh, poet laureate of Wyoming from 1995 through 2002, has long been informed by his youth on his family’s ranch near Lander. In the early 1950s, Roripaugh won bachelor’s and master’s degrees from the University of the Wyoming before spending two years with the U.S. Army in Japan, where he met and married his wife, Yoshiko. In 1958, the Atlantic Monthly published a short story, and Roripaugh has been publishing and winning prizes on a national level ever since. Also that year he began teaching in the English department at the University of Wyoming, rising to the rank of full professor before retiring in 1993.

William Henry Jackson’s artistic passions began during childhood in upstate New York. By age 15, he was retouching photographs for professionals. His photos of the West, especially Yellowstone Park, many of them made in the 1870s with the Hayden survey, had an enormous influence on public perceptions of the American West.

German-American landscape artist Albert Bierstadt captured a transformative time in American history. His travels through Wyoming and the West gave Bierstadt a one-of-a-kind perspective for painting his best-known works in the 1850s and 1860s, and his grandiose landscapes and their idealized, pristine panoramas have sparked the imagination of generations.

Celebrated Wyoming sculptor Robert Russin created works of all sizes in bronze and stone. Though not a native of the state, Russin lived and taught in Laramie for sixty years, and his work continues to influence artists, students, collectors and the public.

In 1943, Cpl. Leon Tebbetts and three other soldier-artists were among the thousands of troops stationed at the U.S. Army Air Base in Casper. They created 15 murals showing major events in Wyoming history on the interior walls of the Servicemen’s Club. The colorful murals have been well preserved and can still be seen today at the same place—now the Wyoming Veterans Memorial Museum.

The Hyart Theatre in Lovell, Wyo., opened in 1951. The owner, Hyrum “Hy” Bischoff, used creative designs that were in fashion at the time. He included a curved screen for CinemaScope movies and stereophonic sound in the theater, which contained 1,001 upholstered seats. The Hyart also has a unique façade. The Bischoff family owned and operated the theater until the early 1990s, when it was closed. Through the efforts of a local nonprofit group, the Hyart was reopened Nov. 13, 2004, and continues to delight moviegoers and serve as a place for local entertainers to stage performances.

Pages

Encyclopedia | Buffalo Bill Cody supposedly was just 14 when he made his thrilling, 322-mile ride for the Pony Express. In fact, it never happened. The staying power of the story, though, shows a great deal about the fiction-fact mix that makes Wyoming and the West what they are today.

Encyclopedia | Sisters Gertrude and Laura Huntington, the first women newspaper owners in Wyoming, bought the Platte Valley Lyre in Saratoga, Wyo., in 1890 and ran it for 12 years, competing all the while with the Saratoga Sun to inform and entertain their readers. Both women later led long professional careers in Carbon County.

Encyclopedia | Wyoming’s first poet laureate, award-winning poet and fiction writer Peggy Simson Curry, grew up on a ranch in North Park, Colo., a world that informed much of her work. As an adult she taught writing at Casper College for 25 years, nurturing the work and hopes of generations of writers that followed her.

Encyclopedia | Lora Nichols of Encampment, Wyo., got a camera for her 16th birthday in 1899 and kept snapping photos until her death at age 78. Her work leaves a vivid record of her time and place, and of her clear-eyed vision of the lives of her neighbors and kin.

Encyclopedia | In 1909, Elinore Pruitt answered Burntfork, Wyo. rancher Clyde Stewart’s Denver Post ad for a housekeeper. She soon married Stewart and achieved her dream of becoming a homesteader. Her vivid letters about her experiences were published in the book Letters of a Woman Homesteader, bringing her nationwide fame.

Encyclopedia | Trained in Paris and Rome, Baltimore artist Alfred Jacob Miller attended the 1837 fur-trade rendezvous in what’s now western Wyoming. Miller sketched and painted all aspects of the fur trade for his patron, the Scottish adventurer William Drummond Stewart, and later reworked much of this material into oil paintings for a wider audience.

Pages

Sponsors

WyoHistory.org welcomes the support of the following sponsors. Contact us at editor@wyohistory.org for information on levels and types of available sponsorships. For more information about our sponsors and the people behind WyoHistory.org, visit our About Us page: